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Frankenstein, Dracula, Nick Nolte at the gates

Since the late 1990s, experts — real and imagined — have warned of a
human-capital nightmare that would strike Uncle Sam dumb. Figuratively and
literally. Dumb! As in dumb, dumb.

It was envisioned as a close encounter of the worst kind.
Pick your nightmare combination. Maybe a union of The Creature from the Black
Lagoon and Phil Spector after a rough night. A shape-shifter that would
shake and maybe break the very foundation of our government: Human capital a.k.a
people. Like you.

Each and every year, various spotters have spotted a tidal
wave building up just over the horizon, which morphed into an even scarier-sounding tsunami. One that would pull hundreds of thousands of the government's
best, most experienced people into retirement. Or into the private sector —
if there are any comparable-paying jobs out there.

Over the years as the brain-draining tsunami failed to form,
experts said that when it did hit, it could also leave Uncle Sam with over-the-hill time-servers who had no outside job prospects and were reluctant to retire.

The best and brightest would be gone, they feared, and the dumb and dumber would
inherit the government.

Now, after almost 13 years, the tsunami forecasters seem to
be on the right track. Government retirements, for a variety of reasons, are up
dramatically and rising every month. Some of it is the coming of age of baby
boomers. Thousands qualify for retirement each year. And with a third year
without a pay raise coming up, some who might otherwise have stayed on are having
second thoughts.

Earlier this year, Federal News Radio's Michael O'Connell crunched the numbers and
said the tidal wave might have begun. Some self-appointed "experts" (like me) said
not yet. But maybe we were wrong.

The number of retirement applications jumped 24 percent between
2010 and 2011, when 104,810 people pulled the plug. Although December is
typically a slow month for retirements, applications jumped from 4,726 in 2010 to
7,041 in 2011.

Buyouts and early-out offers in the U.S. Postal Service,
Social Security Administration and other agencies are clearly adding to the flood
of retirements.

So what will it do to agencies — like yours — if
the T-wave hits?

A long-time IRS employee in the midwest said:

"...I cannot wait for 2014. Not only will I be able to retire, but 70 percent of
the IRS employees working in insolvency (handling bankruptcy cases) will be
eligible to retire. I hope they all go. I am one of three senior employees in
my office with 26 years service. Otherwise there is nobody with more than 10
years experience...The IRS will lose so much experience. It took me, with 20
years service, at least three years to feel comfortable in this job and know what I
was talking about. The newbies don't know or haven't had the experience I have
had in my career because of the changes that have been made...there soon will be
so many people lost in jobs they don't know how to do. There will be fewer of them
and they will be expected to do more."

So how about you. Is the T-monster here or just around the
corner. And what's in it for you and your agency?

Issa seeks answers on
layoff notices from defense companiesChairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Darrel Issa
(R-Calif.), wrote to the heads of 10 defense companies seeking information about
the legal justification for not issuing notices of potential layoffs due to
sequestration.

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